Title page of a 1901 printing
Charlemagne depicted in a 15th-century manuscript of the Schwabenspiegel

The Schwabenspiegel is a legal code, written in ca. 1275 by a Franciscan friar in Augsburg. It deals mainly with questions of land ownership and fiefdom, and it is based on the Pentateuch, Roman law as well as Canon law. Written in Middle High German,[1] it draws on the early 13th century Sachsenspiegel, and is immediately dependent on the Deutschenspiegel code.

The name "mirror of the Swabians" is also taken from the Sachsenspiegel ("mirror of the Saxons"), both metaphorically compared to a mirror in which to perceive right and wrong. Since the code is not prescriptive but descriptive, i.e. it records current legal practice, it does not impose any new laws.

Whereas the Sachsenspiegel recalled Jews as not bearing arms due to their mentioning in the King's peace, the Schwabenspiegel says it was because they do not bear arms that they were mentioned in the peace.[2]

References

  1. ↑ Blind, Karl (1892). "Swiss and French Election Methods". The North American Review. 155 (432): 576. ISSN 0029-2397. JSTOR 25102476.
  2. ↑ Arkel, Dik van (2009). "Early Medieval France and Germany up to 1096". The Drawing of the Mark of Cain. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. p. 360. ISBN 978-90-8964-041-3. JSTOR j.ctt46mt4q.14.
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